Thanos's Equestrian Vacation
by LynchingVerse
Summary: Death takes Thanos to one of her favourite worlds for a vacation after the events of Twilight VIII, Equestria. The Titan does not take to it well. Originally by Draxx.
1. Chapter 1

He had been working on a personal project when she had abducted him. "It'll be fun! Come on, do something different." He couldn't refuse her anything. They both knew that. But that was a low blow.

He was not sure what they were celebrating, assuming that's what they were doing, or the significance of the date, or any of the other elements that brought this decision about. He could think of several possibilities, naturally, although none of them seemed likely. If he had to decide upon a catalyst, he would assume it was just her being herself.

He could understand the appeal. She had forever, and saw and knew everything. It was hard enough for him, and he had the merest fraction of what she did. To remain stable, you had to occasionally allow a sudden and extreme change. Abandoning her purpose and responsibilities for an irrelevant period was simply giving her the opportunity to do so.

Regardless of possible motives, she had taken him here, to this strange dimension, and made it plain the two of them would be here for an arbitrary period of time. So for a month, as the inhabitants measured things, nobody in any of the universes would be born or die, while the two of them existed... here.

Thanos began analyzing the interior with his extra senses, and quickly found the dimension to be a strange place. It was a tiny world, so small that when he utilized his advanced optics he could actually see the back of his head. No more then some dozen hundred kilometers in width then. And, in a valley near some rather severe topography, there was a village, inhabited by a race of quadpedal mammals in a variety of strange hues, who lived in a utopia, or at least a primitive approximation of one.

He places them at around zero point zero four on the great filter, and zero point zero point two on the Kardashev scale. If he was generous. Their society was inefficient and wasteful, with most of the production geared to purely irrelevant constructs, however given that any conceivable material want was within reach (at least, from their very, very limited perspective) he assumed that the roles only actually existed for the purpose of personal direction. He himself had little interest in society, or even spending time with other beings. But even as societies went, this one was lacking. They passed around valueless commodities but attached no value to any of them, giving them no purpose in the transference in the first place. It was all completely arbitrary.

Though it made sense, he supposed, inasmuch as any of their strange society did. He remained confused as to how they built the structures they lived in, given that they had no evidence of harvesting the raw materials for the purpose of construction, and lacked the ability to shape them given their forms and capabilities. All in all, when attempted to analyze them, he met several discrepancies that suggested he had only a fraction of what he needed to really comprehend anything he saw.

He was more confused as to the physics of the place, or lack thereof. It lacked the density and mass to produce a sufficient gravitational field, the atmosphere should be too thin to properly create the required patterns to even have wind, let alone allow them to breathe, and keep the suns rays from burning the planet to create a lifeless rock. At last he'd identified to minor godlings in the heavens, and realized that it was all simply a product of them, and he'd promptly lost interest. For a while, he'd thought of going up there and challenging them, but given the society they'd built he doubted that would actually serve as something to challenge him. And if one did not challenge and seek to surpass oneself, what was the point in anything?

She was having fun, of course, not bothering about any of this. The second she arrived, she transformed into a black and white pony with an Ankh birthmark and began frolicking with the rest, swallowing herself up in their games. He was a bit jealous at their attention, but managed to repress it and refocus. Given he had, as it were, nothing to do, he tried to find a problem to unravel. None of the ones he identified served to do more then irritate him at their inconsistencies. So he spent the first day focussing on the tiny pocket universe, deconstructing and reconstructing it until he was familiar with every inch at a sub-atomic level, understanding everything from the movement of tachyons to the various broken systems that made the world inhabitable for those not as advanced as he.

The next day, he began shifting elements to be more to his liking, without unduly effecting the inhabitants of this world. He didn't much care for them, but she did, and if he ruined their lives she'd be hurt. So reforming it all was hard, as there was precious little ambient energy he was able to manipulate to his will. Their sun was so small it should have burned out in exactly one rotation, and that was the least of it.

"Are you doing magic?" The creature that asked was diminutive, especially by his standards, and soft. If he did not expend significant effort when he touched it, it would break, crushed beyond recognition. It's skin was a shade very different to every other he'd seen so far, and more to the point it had a small nub of bone poking through it's hair at it's forehead. Based on the pheromones it was emitting it was female, based on the age of it's cells it was young and apparently it was too curious for it's own good.

They'd observed him before, but had the sense to let well enough alone, avoiding him for the most part, the way he preferred it. Apparently this one had no sense of self-preservation, or instead was too curious for what it had to make a difference. If natural selection existed on the planet, he would be doing ponies to come a favor by eliminating this one. But given they lived lives free of adversity, he supposed there was really no point. Eventually, some dimensional conqueror would come and then where would they be?

So he didn't respond. He had better things to do then waste time with a being who could not even begin process ten of the verb tenses to explain what he was doing, let alone how he was doing it.

"What are you doing then?"

He narrowed his eyes, then shrugged. "Attempting to reconfigure reality by influencing all matter present on the lowest possible level, to an extent that I can reform aspects of your world. I will then begin restructuring elements, causing alteration at it's most fundamental level. When I succeed, elements should become clearer as to why."

"..." Twilight Sparkle had no idea how to answer that. Thanos resumed his concentration. Realizing she would have to be more proactive to get this big thing to open up, Twilight Sparkle neighs softly. "Why what?" She asks at last.

"Why is the only question that matters. Why this exists. And that will lead me to how this exists, and so I should, if the whim ever took me, be able to recreate it." He replied, one tenth of his mental processing power that should be measuring the energy output of the sun and calculating how it seemed self-sufficient distracted from it's task by her and her questions, superlative mental concentration nonwithstanding. That was irritating.

"That seems silly."

"Does it." It's not a question, it's a closed statement, hoping it would close the conversation. He really had no interest in talking to her. Then again, he was not as a whole equipped for a conversation with another being.

"Well, yeah. There are so many more interesting things to dedicate time to. Like friends."

He pauses. His universal communicator was having trouble with that last word. He didn't actually understand her, so much as he read her mind and filtered it through several inhibitors to allow him to understand what she _meant_. It takes him a moment, then he shudders slightly. "What a terrible concept." He says, with genuine shock.

The pony laughs, not at all understanding how the idea of friends would sound to a failed attempt to create a supreme intelligence, that was driven by extreme nihlism to the point of being unable to see the value of anything that was not written in to the very fabric of reality. "I didn't have any friends at first, either. That's why Princess Celestia sent me here. Did she send you here as well?"

"No."

_Dear Princess Celestia,  
>Today I learned that some people like different things to you, and sometimes the best intentions get taken the wrong way. But just because you don't understand something you shouldn't be scared of it.<br>Your faithful student,_

_Twilight Sparkle._


	2. Chapter 2

It was a glorious early afternoon in the village of Ponyville. The sky was clear, the birds were singing, not too hot, not too cold, the rodents were minding their manners...

And then the earth beneath them shook in a great quake as the earth shuddered at tremendous trauma. Shockwaves cracked buildings, knocked over trees and crumbled mountains. Buildings collapsed, trapping ponies aside, and when it finally came to a stop the village was completely demolished to rubble.

A tree house dwelling where lived the resident bookworm and organizer extraordinaire, Twilight Sparkle, protégé of the honorable Princess Celestia herself, was uprooted, the house that had been built between the branches completely gone.

An earthquake like this had never happened before in living memory. The ponies weren't sure what to do, so they all asked for ideas. And so time went on, many ideas were had, but the town remained demolished. Then Twilight Sparkle decided to ask the strange thing that had recently moved to the mountains. It seemed to know a whole lot of things no ponies knew. Maybe it could tell them what had happened, and how to fix it.

Thanos had completed his machine. The entire thing was like a giant, frictionless orb, rotating slowly in the air, so perfectly smooth it would be in perpetual motion with the slightest push. Thanos, however, was nowhere to be seen.

"Hello." Twilight Sparkle called cheerfully.

Thanos emerged. He was enormous, as tall as many trees, and covered in enormous slabs of muscle. His skin was dark bruise, his chin ridged, his eyes milky white pools as bleak and pitiless as the slopes of hell themselves, and the hard lines of his face setting his thin lips into something like a scowl. When he pushed his lips together, he seemed to have no lips at all.

When he didn't say anything, Twilight Sparkle spoke for both of them. "There was an earthquake, and all the buildings got destroyed."

"You have the means to make more."

"But many ponies don't have anywhere to live now, and are cold and frightened."

The Mad Titan was completely unmoved. "You have the means to make more of them as well."

Twilight Sparkle was completely untutored in that, so she simply stores it among the other questions she had to ask, and tried again.

"What should we do?"

"Death is as psychologically important as life. More so, if anything." He replies. "It is inevitable, and will come regardless of what you do. You live at the mercy of cosmic forces, of the laws of the universe. Any moment something beyond your understanding may choose to end your life, that you will be powerless to resist. As powerless as you are now. More so."

He steps closer, and towers over the pony that is desperately trying to digest his explanation. Contrary to many opinions, Thanos is not cruel. Merely completely indifferent about the lives of people in the universe. As he told her a moment ago, there are always more. Life had no trouble perpetuating itself. "A comet could come, and make your atmosphere unbreathable. Your world could collide with another, some multiversal conqueror might defeat your defenders and take your world for itself, this bubble may break down and move on without you. You might be scythed by ice, or fire, or conquest, and your world would end. So live for the moment. Because every moment you had was a gift."

"..." Twilight Sparkle doesn't know where to go with that. "What's Death?" She asked at last, but Thanos was gone.

She went back to the ruins, and helped fixing things.

_Dear Princess Celestia,_

_... I'm not sure what I learned today, but whatever it was, it was definitely something important. Anyway, me and my friends are rebuilding Ponyvile, and it's times like this you learn who your friends are. You learn who you can really count on, and that, to me is important._

_Your faithful student,_

_Twilight Sparkle_


	3. Chapter 3

"So that's about it," said Twilight after explaining everything to her two friends she'd called here. "I'm sure he didn't mean to cause the earthquake, if he stays up there who knows what might hit Ponyville next. I've tried doing research, but nothing in my books say anything about… whatever he talks about, for some reason. So all we can do is just put our heads together and work with what we have. I called you both, because Fluttershy is good with animals, and even though he's not really an animal, neither are dragons, so maybe she can get through to him. And Pinkie dealt with those bugs a while ago."

Fluttershy was a quiet filly who expressed herself more through her eyes and the tone of her skin than she did with words. Her flesh had a hue of gold which made her look warm and precious as a sylph or spirit of nature, her mane and tail were a light, delicate shade of pink as soft as seafoam, and here eyes were budding with innocence and gentle understanding.

Fluttershy was almost painfully shy, sensitive and quiet, withdrawn when outside her area of expertise, and terrified of attention. She seemed soft and frail, almost vulnerable, as though a light breeze would make her dissipate, and even her wings were small and delicate.

Looking at her, one found oneself with an instinctive desire to adore and protect her, although she normally did her very best to avoid any attention whatsoever. Which is why she was utterly paralyzed at the moment.

Pinkie Pie was as far from this extreme as it was possible to be without the curvature of space placing you right back where you started. Unlike her withdrawn friend, her every action was larger then life, as though she was trying to encompass the entire world. She was small, with a feminine softness to her, fleshy rather then, due to her fondness for eating, she was extremely colorful and regularly loud. She never sat still, hyperactive to the point of over-stimulation, and was never capable of remaining still for more then a moment. She loves planning big parties, being the center of attention, and otherwise socializing.

She looks at her two friends blank expressions. "So ... any ideas?" said Twilight, a tiny bit desperately.

"Ooh ooh," said Pinkie Pie, suddenly brightening up and speaking a hundred miles per hour. "I've got a plan! We could throw a party! Everypony loves parties, and I'll bet he does too! I've never met him before, but I'll bet he still loves parties. We won't have anything to worry about then, no pony is sad or spooky at parties! And then you can tell him what you want, and he'll be so happy he'll do whatever you tell him!" She bounced up and down. "Come on, we should do it! I'll get the streamers and the cake! Do you think he eats cake? I'll bet he does!"

"We'll keep that in reserve." Twilight replies, silently vowing that, no matter how stupid Fluttershy's idea was, they'd go with that instead.

"Um ..." whispered Fluttershy. "I- I don't really think that… Well, I was thinking that we just have to approach it the right way." She says, lowering her eyes and mumbling a little. "We just have to find out what he wants, and then find a way for him to get it that won't cause earthquakes."

"That's a great idea!" Pinkie replies. "What does he want?"

"Um… Should we ask him?"

"He doesn't make any sense. He just uses a whole lot of made up words to describe things that don't exist." Twilight replies. "Trust me."

"Something the matter, darlings?" Rarity asks, bustling in, her elaborately curled mane sparkling as she does. Rarity is Ponyville's premier designer, a fashionista and artist who uses clothes as her medium, and is another of Twilight's closest friends since coming to live in Ponyville.

She'd been very busy recently, as Hoity Toity, Owner of the Best of the Best Boutique in Canterlot, had been preparing her designs for a tour, ranging from Manehattan to Stalliongrad to Fillydelphia. Meaning Rarity was looking at the opportunity of a lifetime, and that as the days creapt closer she was working so hard she had barely left her store in a month, except for her weekly spa with Fluttershy. Even the earthquake had passed her by, completely unnoticed.

"You all look downright miserable. Whatever can be the matter?"

* * * * *

Booted feet clamped across the shining metal floor, the panes of steel each fitted together so precisely and seamlessly that they were near totally smooth. Light streaked across the expansive observatory, gleaming out from the flames bellow, which hung in the curving window that dominated the chamber. The ceiling, that too silver, arced high above the head of the armored Titan.

He watched as the crust of the world below slowly beginning to fissure from the force of his blow, as fires bellow seethed and rolled on a sea of molten rock. The planets core was as expected. It was the rest of the world that was so strange.

The ground began to further crack and falter before the onslaught from within, as if the molten core of the planet had grown fists and was trying to relieve its imprisonment. Thanos sighed, and with a stream of energy replaced the cross section, leaving the ground once more as it had been, and ending the tremoring that was throwing around the surrounding regions. That hadn't been likely anyway.

He considered the sun again, eyes staring into it's depths without damage or need to look away, as he measured it's emissions and energy. Again, they didn't add up. The sun was too close, it should consume this world with it's heat. And it was too small, it should burn out far sooner, and yet based on his dating it had burned ten thousand years already, despite being barely large enough to have sufficient gravity to hold itself together.

It just didn't make sense. And that wouldn't do at all.

The mystery had taken over now, he meant to have answers before he left, one way or another. Perhaps if he...

"Hi!"

Thanos turned slowly, to face a small, pink abomination staring up at him brightly. Based on annalysis, it was the same age and species of the previous annoyance.

"How did you get there?" He asks, confused. They were hovering a hundred feet off the ground, and there were no enterances anyway. He would have sensed teleportation as the nearby reality was disttorted, and there was no way she broke through without him noticing. He would have noticed the stray energy from magic, so as far as he could tell there was no way she could be there.

There she was.

"I walked. You just do it, you know?" She replies, so guilelessly that it was impossible to suspect she was being anything but honest.

Thanos mannaged to keep from replying. It was a near thing. Pinki Pie, however, saw silence as a sin, and strove to fill it up as quickly as she could.

"Do you like parties?"


	4. Chapter 4

Passive resistance was not going to be enough anymore. Ignoring his rather clear protestations, they had somehow gotten him here, into the middle of their mostly rebuilt town, and dragged him into one of their structures.

For some reason beyond his understanding, but presumably in order to impress him, garish colors had been draped on every surface, and thin orbs had been filled with buoyant gas to make them float, apparently to keep them out of the way when they weren't in use, though what purpose they served was far beyond him. The ceiling was much to low for hum so they kept bumping against his head.

The pink abomination was bouncing around him, squealing excitedly. "This is going to be fun! You can meet all my friends, and have fun, and do all sorts of things! Twilight says you know magic. I think it would be cool to know magic. Then I could..." He makes a few adjustments to his audio filters, and cuts out her frequency. Blessed silence.

He appreciates this for a while, until he notices that all the beings were looking at him with the same confused expressions. Realizing they expected him to respond he turned off the filters. "Aren't you going to cut the cake? It's your party, afterall."

The cake was a large mound of sugar, animal extract and ground plants. He shook his head. "I do not require sustenance."

Apparently, this was the wrong thing to say, for they only looked more confused. If only to get it over with, he telekinetically divides it into segments, one for each being present (minus himself) then steps back and hopes they'll ignore him so he can make a hasty exit.

"So what do you eat?"

"My body is completely efficient. I have no need to consume anything unless I am replacing damaged tissue, in which I simply substitute the nearest chemical formula I can make and burn off the irregularities."

"Told you." Twilight Sparkle says, sounding just a little smug.

"Well, even if you must tell me how you work gold into your fabrics like that." Rarity said, eyes sparkling with excitement as she stared at his uniform. "It's clearly golden, and yet it moves like silk."

"Nanomachnes bonded to create a dense, flexible material, carbon based. It's not actually gold, it's just the color I happened to make it." He says, without once engaging his brain and having no idea what this meant to Rarity.

Rarity thought for a moment of a fabric that could do anything, anything at all, take on any color, be soft as the kiss of the wind or solid as the foundations of the earth, and her eyes sparkled as though she'd just caught a glimpse of the Holy Grail. "Oh. If it's a matter of fashion you must let me work you over, darling. Something less menacing and more flattering for your rugged countenance." She says, batting her eyes outrageously, and attempting to flirt with him. If she could pry out how exactly that worked, which she had little doubt she could, the entire world (of fashion) was he oyster. She could design anything! The only limits would be the furthest reaches of her imagination!

"Not to say your current attire isn't evoking, even iconic, however I could give it a certain _je ne sais __quoi_ that would make you the envy of everyone you meet." She adds, suddenly worried she was sounding a little too eager. She couldn't scare him away, not when the secret could be hers...

Spike flared in the corner, not liking the fact that the object of his affections was paying a complement to that big thing, who he'd already unconsciously labeled as not to be trusted. Of course, if he had the barest inkling of what Thanos actually was, his attitude would be considerably different, however as it was he saw the massive being as a scoundrel, an ogre or troll or something like that, here to tempt poor, innocent, sweet and gentle Rarity away with his smarmy ways. The fact that she was making the approaches and Thanos was utterly clueless were ignored for the sake of perpetuating his delusion.

Thanos, for his part, was so shocked at the suggestion his entire mind, capable of performing calculations on par with any super computer, shut down for a moment. He quickly tried to determine, rationally, what exactly he was saying, but that was his weakness, no capacity for illogic or superficialities, the impracticalities that less enlightened beings spent their existences obsessing over. And so, faced with a question he has no answer for, he can only shrug, and allow himself to be led away by Ponyville's resident fashion designer while he tried to figure out what in all the multiverse was going on.

_Dear Princess Celestia,  
>Today I learned that Pinkie Pie and Rarity<em> always _get what they want.  
>Your faithful student,<em>

_Twilight Sparkle._


End file.
